The game might be slightly too hard for new Players

[avc15]

3 minutes ago, Lurve said:

My preferred tweaks for new players:

On this line of thought.

Rename "no sweat" mode to "standard" mode and "survival mode" to "ruthless"

People shouldn't feel like they need to dive in on survival mode. It shouldn't feel like you're selecting "easy mode" it should feel like you're NOT selecting "hard mode".

[Sasza22]

They started making tutorial videos so it`s something. We need to wait and see how new players react. And we definetly need to update the wiki once the game is out.

[Hedning]

1 minute ago, avc15 said:

On this line of thought.

Rename "no sweat" mode to "standard" mode and "survival mode" to "ruthless"

People shouldn't feel like they need to dive in on survival mode. It shouldn't feel like you're selecting "easy mode" it should feel like you're NOT selecting "hard mode".

This is a slippery slope, and it's not a fallacy because I've seen it start to slip already. I see more and more games remove the "easy" difficulty and starting on "normal", but it doesn't help because the people who are new and who wouldn't select "easy" even though that would be the best difficulty now starts demanding to beat the game on "hard" instead. Soon "hard" will be the easiest difficulty in games and "ruthless" be normal, and then those players will demand to beat the game on "ruthless" forcing us to invent even higher difficulty names. It never ends.

[bmilohill]

12 minutes ago, avc15 said:

On this line of thought.

Rename "no sweat" mode to "standard" mode and "survival mode" to "ruthless"

People shouldn't feel like they need to dive in on survival mode. It shouldn't feel like you're selecting "easy mode" it should feel like you're NOT selecting "hard mode".

Except no sweat is easy mode. Survival was always the standard mode of the game, no sweat was added for people who just wanted to experiment with the physics. From the rocketry update patch notes:

A new "No Sweat" game mode has been added to tailor your experience to your preferred playstyle. The previously available game mode is now called "Survival".

[ONIfreak]

16 minutes ago, avc15 said:

On this line of thought.

Rename "no sweat" mode to "standard" mode and "survival mode" to "ruthless"

People shouldn't feel like they need to dive in on survival mode. It shouldn't feel like you're selecting "easy mode" it should feel like you're NOT selecting "hard mode".

Why? is it a shame to choose "easy mode"

[avc15]

I'm a practical perspective. The alternative is you have brand new players come in here and get creamed in survival, then complain about the game being hard instead of sandboxing or picking an easier mode.

This is the age of participation trophies. If you don't hand out trophies you're going to be buried under complaints. Let them have it, it costs nothing. The alternative is far more objectionable.

 

[tseitsei]

Easy game means boring/short game. If you quickly learn all the tricks, why would you keep playing anymore?

[ONIfreak]

Guys i will be honest with you. I hate to see many games get easier and easier cause players ask for it. I'm not an incredibly advanced oni player, i got few k cycles has sonething like 15 colonies so far and feel comfortable but i keep discover new setups every week. But i try to be active on forum and help new players if they stuck somewhere. In my opinion difficulty of this game is well balanced and making it easier or "fix issues " by devs rather than think for a bit and solve it by myself it is wrong way to go. All problems can be solved woth already available topls, some are tedious, some require to spin a head around and take few different approaches but it is possible. Heat management, airlocks, cooling hydrogen etc - all possible.  If any new player have any issue or stuck somewhere please post it on forum. Lots of ppl will be happy to help bit please don't break this gamr. 

[Rainbowdesign]

Quote: like that the Electrolyzer is putting the Oxygen always out in 70c (unless the water is hotter than 70c), which will destroy every beginner Base quite fast.

 

When i find a good way to integrate the settings into the lua scripting engine it would be possible to change the way buildings work depending on the setting like difficulty, so you could change the output temperature of the electrolyzer on nosweat.

[ONIfreak]

9 minutes ago, Rainbowdesign said:

Quote: like that the Electrolyzer is putting the Oxygen always out in 70c (unless the water is hotter than 70c), which will destroy every beginner Base quite fast.

 

When i find a good way to integrate the settings into the lua scripting engine it would be possible to change the way buildings work depending on the setting like difficulty, so you could change the output temperature of the electrolyzer on nosweat.

Correct. It will. Lost colony to that. After that i went to forum and found SPOM, learnt this and never made this mistake anymore.and forgot that it is an issue.  

[Cairath]

44 minutes ago, Hedning said:

Rename "no sweat" mode to "standard" mode and "survival mode" to "ruthless"

And everyone who comes to experience a survival game will turn it off because of how easy it is. This game is all about failing and learning on your mistakes. There's no shame in picking easy mode if someone feels the need to. You don't see veterans running around screaming "max difficulty options should be the default survival mode!"

As it is now, the default is in the middle - as it should be, and from there you can go lower or higher.

[Rainbowdesign]

Actually the normal survival mod is too easy for me thats why i make mods that make the game harder ( depending on the settings also easier)

[LZ96]

This game requires thinking and planning, not just button smashing and overpower npcs...it's a strategy/survival game for a reason...

There are so many ways to deal with different situations and you are open to do It anyone you think is feasible. 

Guide out layouts? You can lay it out anyway you want. Who says you have to make eletrolyze enclosed in a SPOM setup in order to work make it perform good (community had it as a pyraimd like building back in the days and worked). Guides limits your imagination and critical thinking skill...

Also, a lot of elements are same/similar to real life, instead of asking things to be made easier, look at why thing behave the way they are, (e.g. how and why heat transfer works in real life)

 

[SakuraKoi]

15 minutes ago, tseitsei said:

Easy game means boring/short game. If you quickly learn all the tricks, why would you keep playing anymore?

Don't worry, that's how Souls-like games came into being~

Seriously, few games are about giving a fair challenge anymore or rather at all. Artificial difficulty, enforcing trial&error has been standard since the very beginning where games were made hard due to the fact that more content would have costed more money.

Balancing a game is terribly difficult already simply because someone else is asking one to stretch play time, not make it scare away customers &c.

Then there is of course the time and competence it needs to get it just right, to consider all and everything. ONI is all things considered, pretty well balanced, by no means perfect but drastic changes will only result in worse.

There is no argument in having tutorials, ingame help, notes &c (not too visual) which explain stuff and what to be wary of but what ONI currently needs in terms of balance are things to be made viable which is quite significantly different to just "buffing" things and putting others into oblivion instead.

[selereth]

9 minutes ago, Cairath said:

And everyone who comes to experience a survival game will turn it off because of how easy it is. This game is all about failing and learning on your mistakes. There's no shame in picking easy mode if someone feels the need to. You don't see veterans running around screaming "max difficulty options should be the default survival mode!"

As it is now, the default is in the middle - as it should be, and from there you can go lower or higher.

This right here. There seems to be an ongoing trend in the gaming industry these days where developers feel this need to simplify their games to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Klei is one of the few companies who has bucked this trend; Don't Starve is an incredibly difficult game and requires hours upon hours of learning the various mechanics (provided you don't cheat and look everything up on the wiki). A lot of the fun stems from learning the game yourself instead of being spoon fed the entire time. It's the challenge that makes it enjoyable and worthwhile.  

[N00bieMeap]

Yeah, in time it was easy, I'm as a newbie was like:
-Dupe Trait:
   +Fart wut? where're these natural gas coming from?
   +Bladder change. what could possibly go wrong
-Ingame feature:
   +Dig Oxylite
   +Dig everywhere in start biome to get O2
   +40 Celsius is HOT!!!!
   +There're germs? how to kill them? and my base is full of washing basin
   +Atmosphere? so tree eat CO2 and poop O2?
   +Living in start biome until death
   +...

And then I go find guide, and lost my creativity, exploration. Just copy and copy and copy, find, install and request stupidly easy mods, rewrite files for easy game (pois, geysers) and play sandbox, debug all the time

[SharraShimada]

This is not a game for the players who want "click here, do that, then this". Its part of the gameplay to find solutions for your problems. 

If a gamer wants to be pampered all the way through, ONI may not be the right game.

There are already so many games out there, the devs ruinied by listening to a handfull of "cry-babys", while thousands are just fine with the way it was. And then the game went south.

[DemainaNyx]

I will agree that there is a steep learning curve for new players, but that's how Don't Starve works as well.  I have died more times in Don't Starve from something else killing me than from starving and mostly it's just things you need to learn.  Most other games teach you to fight everything you see and here are two games that teach you to wait until you can handle it which I think is amazing.

Yeah, I can murder all my hatches for food, but then I have no renewable coal unless the printer blesses me with another hatch.  I think that mechanic is much better than an endlessly spawning food sources in your starter biome.

I do wish though that some things were disclosed on machines though.  I watched Brothgar play his mega base yesterday and try to grow some gas grass which states it needs chlorine.  He planted it in a chlorine atmosphere and it didn't work.  It took him to the end of the video to figure out it needed liquid chlorine and light because those were not stated in the tooltip. 

Same with how machines now output emissions at X temp or higher depending on input.  That's fine, but just state it somewhere so a first time builder can read that electrolyzers output at 70c (or whatever it is now) so they might figure out to cool the oxygen instead of trying to freeze the water.  If not on the tooltip, put it in the database in game and add "See Database For More Info" so that they learn to check there if they have questions. 

Even disclosing that two liquids don't mix and gasses can't exchange places would help a lot.  Maybe have a tutorial message that states "Strangely, the behavior of gasses, liquids, and germs works differently on this asteroid.  It seems as if only one element can occupy a tile at a time."  That wouldn't outright tell new players what to do, but it introduces them to the idea.  Most people know that carbon dioxide is a heavy gas and might be able to figure out that it would work as a dry lock to prevent gasses from mixing.  While ideally having the mechanical airlocks work better would be easiest to understand, a carbon dioxide lock isn't hard to conceptualize once the "one tile, one element" rule is established.  Or perhaps have a new ruin that shows a carbon lock that separates a desk is oxygen from a room in chlorine to hint at this design without outright tutorializing it for them.  It might also teach people to use floral scent to get rid of slime lung or to use water and crude oil to make a two tile tall waterlock.

 

I think a lot of the problem is that there isn't a "right way" for this game.  There is my way, his way, her way, their way, etc but none of these are the only way to do something.  You see some players generating oxygen using algae terrariums 1000s of cycles into a game, then you have others with multiple single electrolyzer SPOM designs, then you have an open air electrolyzer design and new players go "but which is the right way" and that's a problem for new players.  Most people want a guide to follow to get things right but in all honesty most of the design are fine.  They might not be 100% efficient or have the highest output or whatever, but that doesn't make them wrong and I think that's the hardest lesson to teach someone.  I have 1700+ hours in this game so I've made plenty of these mistakes and learned from them, but trying to convince a new player to do that is much harder.  I just don't know how to teach them these things without taking away from the spirit of the game.

[Loscil2]

11 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

This is not a game for the players who want "click here, do that, then this". Its part of the gameplay to find solutions for your problems. 

If a gamer wants to be pampered all the way through, ONI may not be the right game.

There are already so many games out there, the devs ruinied by listening to a handfull of "cry-babys", while thousands are just fine with the way it was. And then the game went south.

Underrated post. Agreed.

8 minutes ago, DemainaNyx said:

I watched Brothgar play his mega base yesterday and try to grow some gas grass which states it needs chlorine.  He planted it in a chlorine atmosphere and it didn't work.  It took him to the end of the video to figure out it needed liquid chlorine and light because those were not stated in the tooltip. 

That was entertaining to watch. Kinda makes me feel better that someone as knowledgeable as him has struggles like this, but hey, trial and error is fun. That's why I like ONI.

[nivodeus]

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

These were how I experience ONI during early access. I cant remember how many colonies I lost or how many dupes were gone, but with each failing colony, the next one always survive longer. It's a process and I took it one step at a time. For me personally, that's the beauty of this game. 

My first few colony I ran out of Oxygen, the other my dupes were cooked to death, another one they all died of starvation and after that, during disease update, most of them fell to the Slimelung. 

I still looked at some guide in the forum for a more complex solution, or when they first introduced logic gate (my illogical brain). And when they introduced the space update, I was so fall behind that even now, I havent really worked on Liquid hydogen or oxygen. 

I think new players who will try ONI will already at least had an experiences with survival or colony building base game. They wont be interested otherwise. I was a Dont Starve player and my friend told me about ONI. 

They might not be very similar but the do have a common denominator or being a survive and repeat kind of game. And they will be adding tutorial videos as well, I think it should be fine. 

They can also try no sweat first, figure things out, maybe get bored and restart with all the knowledge and new challenge of survival, fail and restart again. 

[Darkin Coaled]

New Player of ONI: Somebody who's heard about or seen on youtube or whatnot that the game exists. Through various means made a decision to purchase and play a space colony simulation game. Likely has played one or more of the already established games of a similar nature: heavily moded minecraft (remember that one?), factorio, satisfactorio3D, some might be crossing over from don't starve...

It is safe to say the game is not actually that hard for the New Player.

Designating a "target audience" is the wrong thing to do in many cases. It can really bite you if you miss. But if you make something that just naturally attracts a specific kind of moth, you get yourself a previous-experiences-driven horde of people who will at least give it a try. ONI isn't for everybody but the people it IS for should fare quite alright in the majority of cases.

[Xuhybrid]

20 hours ago, wronny said:

The current reservoirs have multiple benefits that more than justify their size:

• can bemade from basic materials (metal ores; no refinement, no plastic ...)
• straight forward to use
• act as buffer → pump only once

The only real benefit is that it saves power.

[goboking]

14 hours ago, DemainaNyx said:

I do wish though that some things were disclosed on machines though.  I watched Brothgar play his mega base yesterday and try to grow some gas grass which states it needs chlorine.  He planted it in a chlorine atmosphere and it didn't work.  It took him to the end of the video to figure out it needed liquid chlorine

I mean, it clearly says right there in the plant's info tab "Irrigation: Chlorine"...

[cpy]

Game is much easier now than it was when we started. Welfare pod? Geysers? When I started playing, it was all about how long can you go. Now it's more like how much of a lag you're willing to endure before starting new map.

[ONIfreak]

1 hour ago, cpy said:

Game is much easier now than it was when we started. Welfare pod? Geysers? When I started playing, it was all about how long can you go. Now it's more like how much of a lag you're willing to endure before starting new map.

You get better as well. But slimelung should kill if not cured. Extreme heat should kill if not treated. Waterlocks should be nerfed so gas can move liquid horizontally if there is too much pressure ( 5kg of gas should be able to push 10kg of water slowly and gas shpuld be allow to get to tile if it is not full if liquid - 1000kg) - this would game harder in late game. Ah and atmo suits could break from time to time and loose isolation making dups sick